Retired and Travelling

Tasmania – Part 1

After our return from Fiji we picked up the camper in Brisbane and spent two weeks slowly heading south towards Melbourne where we’d be catching the ferry boat to Tasmania.One of our favourite stops was in New South Wales, a place called Nimbin. It’s supposed to be Australia’s most famous hippie destination and alternative lifestyle capital and is known for its cannabis counterculture.

Nimbin main Street

It’s a very arty, crafty place full of ageing, malnourished hippies. We liked it so much we stayed for two weeks 🙂

On 21st October we arrived in Melbourne to catch the overnight ferry to Devonport.

After a great night’s sleep in a luxurious cabin we arrived on Tasmania. The sun was shining and here’s our first impression of this beautiful island

We’re lucky enough to have two friends here, old school mates of mine – Alistair I hadn’t seen for over 40 years! and Sigrid I last saw in 1997😱. We spent a few days at their wonderful home and they told us all the best places to go and ferried us around to local sights. Looking forward to spending Christmas there!

It wasn’t long before we realised that we were going to love Tasmania and in only a few days we’d rebooked our boat trip back, extending our stay by another month.

Compared to the admittedly small part of mainland Australia that we’ve visited, Tasmania is much quieter, much quainter and cosier and much more to our liking. The scenery is amazing, the animal life abundant and the flora so varied and, at this time of year so colourful.

Food isn’t much better than the mainland, but they do have lots of scallop pies (we initially thought that putting scallops into pies was sacrilegious, but quickly got accustomed to it)

For us oyster lovers – we are in oyster heaven. We’ve been eating them at every opportunity and they’re always excellent:

Vineyards are in abundance and during our whole stay, we never bought wine from bottle shops, but spent our time visiting the many “Cellar Doors”, sampling and buying delicious local Pinots and Rieslings.

It’s been great fun visiting the cafes, pubs and restaurants. Lots of them are in beautiful buildings, have open fires for those cool days and quite often sell books, antiques or art on the side:

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In six weeks we’ve experienced all types of weather. From snow on Ben Lomond

to roasting sunshine on some of the most beautiful beaches.

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In Bicheno, whilst having a beer outside the local pub, we were fortunate enough to be able to watch two whales swimming by en route to Antarctica. They put on quite a show for us.

We did despair of ever seeing a live Tasmanian Devil so we visited them at the “Tasmanian Devil Unzoo“. After having seen (and heard) them, it’s very understandable why they’re called “devils”!

It’s very fitting that we’re ending our first stint on Tasmania in a wonderful campsite in Port Arthur.

Yep, that’s our very own en suite bathroom in the background!

We’re nearly the only people here, surrounded by woods and wildlife

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And we have our own camp fire which, as the weather has changed for the worse, is very welcome.

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With our 90 days nearly up again it’s time to leave the country. We’ve spent a few days in Hobart before parking up the camper in long term storage at the airport. Tomorrow we fly to New Zealand where we’ll be touring round the two islands for the next three weeks.